Australian wicketkeeper Matthew Wade was all of 16 when he discovered that he had testicular cancer, that too by chance after he got hit on the groin during a football game.

"I went in and got it checked and the doctor basically said if I hadn't been hit in the testicle, may be I would never have known the tumour was there, so I was pretty lucky I got hit in the nuts and got it checked," Wade told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"It was just a surreal sort of thing. It didn't hit home until I sat there and they told me basically that I was going to go through chemotherapy and lose my hair and all that sort of stuff. As a young bloke at 16, I think that's when it hit home that this was pretty serious.

that I didn't really know, I just thought I'd have an operation and it would be taken care of. Then, sitting down and talking about it, I realised how serious it was, and I was pretty lucky to get through it."

The 24-year-old, who has had a decent run since making his debut against India in the ongoing ODI tri-series,

recalled the time he battled the disease and how he chose cricket over Australian Rules Football.

"For

a couple of years I really just sat back and enjoyed the little things. I wasn't as driven for a period," Wade said.

He began a plumbing apprenticeship, and kept playing both sports -- VFL for Tasmania and first-grade cricket in Hobart --

without thinking he would reach the top level in either.

"When

I got diagnosed with testicular cancer, that was at a pretty crucial time for my footy. I kept playing but it wasn't probably as intense as what it could have been. I floated through that period and started the apprenticeship because I thought professional sport was out of the question," Wade said.

"I still tried to train between cycles (of chemotherapy),

but it was too hard to do it at the intensity I wanted, so I let it take a back seat.

"I remember batting out here (on Bellerive Oval) two or three months later in an under-19s

game. I wanted to keep playing, I just never thought I would play at the highest level. I just thought I'd play first-grade cricket and footy, do my apprenticeship, and that would be me," he added.